I'm around twelve when my dad first hands me his camera.

Standing in our back driveway, looking through the viewfinder, I feel something essential shift inside of myself. A feeling I can only describe as ah, let me just show you. A feeling that I could finally be understood in a way that, prior to this, I didn't know I had been missing. I had found my instrument.

I remember telling my mother immediately that I was to be a photographer. To her credit, she enrolled me in the first darkroom class she could find. And to my complete frustration, art classes followed—because in my mother's house, if I was going to do something, I was going to do it well. I spent the better part of my free time over the next ten years in the dim red glow of a darkroom.

How can I describe the miracle, witnessed over and over again, of an image emerging from nothingness onto a piece of paper floating impatiently in a pool of developer?

I was obsessed. When not in the darkroom, I spent hours on the floor of the library pouring over photography books. My need to understand how to see was insatiable. I thought about nothing else. These were my college years—an early exposure to a life dedicated to art and light. Internships in prestigious photography galleries and assistantships in the studios of my idols followed. I took on my first wedding before I even graduated with my photography degree. Can you really capture a memory in light? I needed to know.

Weddings were magic and they were terrifying. Each one an epic playground of chaos and joy, requiring me to play my instrument to the best of my ability. I needed an arsenal of techniques. I needed speed. I needed to feel my way through the music of the day. It was a grueling learning process, but I thrived under the intensity.

I started as a wallflower. Clad in black, slipping between guests, content to watch the day unfold like a movie. A documentary ninja wielding a camera instead of a sword. I would direct as quietly and simply as possible, photograph all day in a frenzy, then later at home, slowly watch the story coalesce.

But somewhere in the midst of all this, my mother passed away. I was only twenty-eight and couldn't make much sense of any of it. I had sworn off weddings entirely, feeling the weight of serving brides while carrying my own grief. But after completing a yoga teacher training, sitting on the beach and staring out at the ocean, a moment of clarity arrived: I needed to shoot weddings again. The following week I received an email from an old friend asking if I'd document her wedding. The universe was listening.